Video: Cold, Little Comet Is No Match for Big, Hot Sun

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Video: Cold, Little Comet Is No Match for Big, Hot Sun

A small, newly discovered comet will not get a chance to enjoy its fame for long.

As you can see in this image sequence obtained by the Solar and Heliosopheric Observatory, the comet is on a collision course with the sun. Things will not end well for the comet, which will burn.

The comet is believed to be a Kreutz Sungrazer, a class of objects that are fragments of a supercomet that broke up long ago. Many of them are discovered by amateur astronomer internet users (like you) staring at NASA data.

The solar images also show a coronal mass ejection at the upper left of the frame. These expulsions of energetic particles from the sun cause solar storms here on Earth and tend to create beautiful auroral displays in the Earth's polar regions. The other bright object in the video is the planet Mercury.